¹ On the types of variables used and their importance see Katona, George, Mandell, Lewis, and Schmiedeskamp, Jay, 1970 Survey of Consumer Finances (Ann Arbor, 1971), pp. 3–18Google Scholar; Soltow, Lee, “The Distribution of Income Related to Changes in the Distribution of Education, Age, and Occupation,” Review of Economics and Statistics, 42 (1960), 450–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dorothy Projector et al, “Composition of Income as Shown by the Survey of Financial Characteristics of Consumers,” in Six Papers on the Size Distribution of Wealth and Income, ed. Soltow, Lee, Studies in Income and Wealth, vol. 33 (New York, 1969), pp. 145–48Google Scholar; John B. Lansing and John Sonquist, “A Cohort Analysis of Changes in the Distribution of Wealth,” ibid., pp. 31–74; Lampman, Robert J., The Share of Top Wealth-Holders in National Wealth, 1922–1956 (Princeton, 1962), pp. 108–09Google Scholar; Juster, F. Thomas, ed., Education, Income, and Human Behavior (New York, 1975), pt. 1Google Scholar; Robert T. Michael, “Education and Consumption,” ibid., pp. 235–53; Segal, David R. and Felson, Marcus, “Social Stratification and Family Economic Behavior,” in Family Economic Behavior, ed. Sheldon, Eleanor B. (Philadelphia, 1973), pp. 155, 159Google Scholar; and Hendricks, Gary et al. , Consumer Durables and Installment Debt: A Study of American Households (Ann Arbor, 1973), chaps. 2 and 4.Google Scholar

² See Stone, Lawrence, Crisis of the Aristocracy (Oxford, 1965)Google Scholar; “The Rise of the Nuclear Family in Early Modern England,” The Family in History, ed. Rosenberg, Charles E. (Philadelphia, 1975), pp. 13–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “The Educational Revolution in England, 1560–1640,” Past and Present, 28 (1964), 41–80Google Scholar; Davis, Ralph, “English Foreign Trade, 1660–1700,” in Essays in Economic History, vol. 2, ed. Carus-Wilson, E. M. (New York, 1962), pp. 257–72Google Scholar; Wrigley, E. A., “A Simple Model of London's Importance in the Changing English Society and Economy,” Past and Present, 37 (1967), 44–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Hirst, Derek, The Representative of the People? Voters and Voting in England Under the Early Stuarts (Cambridge, 1975).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³ The population figure is based on the Compton Census of 1676 for the Worcestershire diocese reprinted in the Associated Architectural Societies Reports and Papers, 18, pt. 1 (1885), 69–75Google Scholar, after being reconciled with countywide estimates made by Rickman in Great Britain. Abstract of the Answers and Returns (1841 Census), pt. 1, pp. 34–37. I owe the Rickman reference to E. A. Wrigley.

⁴ On the Worcestershire economy see Dyer, Alan D., The City of Worcester in the Sixteenth Century (Leicester, 1973)Google Scholar; Yelling, James, “The Combination and Rotation of Crops in East Worcestershire, 1540–1660,” Agricultural History Review, 17 (1969), 24–43Google Scholar; and Thirsk, Joan, ed., The Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. 4, 1500–1640 (Cambridge, 1967).Google Scholar

⁵ Coverage estimates are based on Eversley, D. E. C., “A Survey of Population in an Area of Worcestershire from 1660 to 1850 on the Basis of Parish Registers,” in Population in History, ed. Glass, D. V. and Eversley, D. E. C. (London, 1965), pp. 394–422Google Scholar; and Coale, Ansley J. and Demeny, Paul, Regional Model Life Tables and Stable Populations (Princeton, 1966)Google Scholar, Model West, level 8, r = 5. The inventories can be found at the County of Hereford and Worcestershire Record Office, St. Helens, Worcester and the Public Record Office, London.

⁶ Estimates of population, demographic characteristics, and probate coverage are based on Middlesex Record Office: 1664 Hearth Tax MR/HT 4; Greater London Record Office, County Hall: St. Dunstan, Stepney Parish Registers, 1661–1664; D. V. Glass, “Two Papers on Gregory King,” in Glass and Eversley, Population in History, pp. 159–220; Glass, D. V., ed., London Inhabitants Within the Walls, 1695 (London, 1966), pp. xxvi–xxviiGoogle Scholar; East London History Group, “The Population of Stepney in the Early Seventeenth Century,” Local Population Studies, 3 (1969), 39–52Google Scholar; Cressy, David, “Occupations, Migration, and Literacy in East London, 1580–1640,” Local Population Studies, 5 (1970), 56–57Google Scholar; and Coale and Demeny, Life Tables, Model West, level 1, R = -10. The inventories can be found in the London Guildhall and the Public Record Office, London.

⁷ Estimates of population, demographic characteristics, and probate coverage for Virginia are based on Walsh, Lorena S. and Menard, Russell R., “Death in the Chesapeake: Two Life Tables in Early Colonial Maryland,” Maryland Historical Magazine, 69 (1974), 211–27Google ScholarPubMed; Russell R. Menard, P. M. G. Harris, and Lois Green Carr, “Opportunity and Inequality: The Distribution of Wealth on the Lower Western Shore of Maryland, 1638–1705,” ibid., p. 176; Morgan, Edmund S., American Slavery, American Freedom (New York, 1975), pp. 412–13Google Scholar; and Rutman, Darrett B. and Rutrnan, Anita H., “‘Now-Wives and Sons-in-Law’: Parental Death in a Seventeenth-Century Virginia County,”paper delivered at the 32nd Conference in Early American History,College Park, Md.,Nov. 1, 1974.Google Scholar The inventories can be found in the Virginia State Library, Richmond. Virginia inventories in the seventeenth century usually valued items in pounds of tobacco rather than pounds sterling. The valuations were converted to pounds sterling at the rate of 200 lbs. of tobacco = £1, the usual county court conversion rate at this time.

⁸ The classification system used here is about the same as the one used for the seventeenth century by the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure. They, however, have just one category for gentlemen and merchants, and simply call their professional class clergy, as that occupation heavily dominated the professional class in the period. Laslett, Peter, “The Study of Social Structure from Listings of Inhabitants,” in Wrigley, E. A., ed., An Introduction to English Historical Demography (New York, 1966), p. 196.Google Scholar

⁹ Menard, Harris, and Carr, “Opportunity,” p. 177.

¹⁰ On logging with MCA see Andrews, Frank M., Morgan, James N., Sonquist, John A., Multiple Classification Analysis (2nd ed.; Ann Arbor, 1973), p. 10.Google Scholar

¹¹ Soltow, Lee, Men and Wealth in the United States, 1850–1870 (New Haven, 1975), p. 124.Google Scholar

¹² The inclusion of women as an Occupational Status category increases the impact of Education because with women one cannot control for status. Thus, much of the work of status is done by Education. I have run MCA without the female observations, however, and found that Education is still significant and that the Beta value is only a few points less.

¹³ One can pull variables out of MCA to discover which variable is intercorrelating.

¹⁴ Menard, Harris, and Carr, “Opportunity,” p. 178; and Waters, John J., “Patrimony, Succession, and Social Stability: Guilford, Connecticut in the Eighteenth Century,” in Donald Fleming and Bernard Bailyn, eds., Perspectives in American History, vol. 10 (1976), pp. 158–59, graph 1.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Homan, George, English Villagers of the Thirteenth Century (1975 rpt.; New York, 1941), pp. 144–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Greven, Philip, Four Generations: Population, Land, and Family in Colonial Andover, Massachusetts (Ithaca, 1970), pp. 125–72Google Scholar; Berkner, Lutz K., “The Stem Family and the Developmental Cycle of the Peasant Household: An 18th Century Austrian Example?” American Historical Review, 77 (1972), 398–418CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Howell, Cicely, “Peasant Inheritance Customs in the Midlands, 1280–1700,” in Goody, Jack, Thirsk, Joan, and Thompson, E. P., eds., Family and Inheritance: Rural Society in Western Europe, 1200–1800 (Cambridge, 1976), pp. 112–55.Google Scholar

¹⁶ In Worcestershire the decline in wealth begins before 60, which explains why the 26–45 category mean goes down after adjustment and the 46–60 category mean goes up. Region accounts for this change. The differences are not enough to make the interaction significant at the 05 level, however. This pattern in Worcestershire may be due to the sample or to mistakes in placing observations in age categories from wills. I suspect, though, that the resource squeeze in late seventeenth-century England, noted by Wrigley, E. A. (“Family Limitation in Pre-Industrial England,” Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 19 [1966], 82–109)CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed, may have forced some parents to transfer personal wealth somewhat earlier.

¹⁷ Howell, “Inheritance Customs,” pp. 126, 145.

¹⁸ Soltow, Men and Wealth, pp. 69–75. This evidence from Soltow would be consistent with Daniel Scott Smith's hypothesis that patrimonial influence over marriage significantly declined during the first half of the nineteenth century: “Parental Power and Marriage Patterns: An Analysis of Historical Trends in Hingham, Massachusetts,” Journal of Marriage and the Family, 35 (1973), 419–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the twentieth century see Goldsmith, R. W., A Study of Saving in the United States, vol. 3 (Princeton, 1956)Google Scholar, table W-61.

¹⁹ Lampman, Top Wealthholders, p. 117.

²⁰ Literacy levels by occupational status are noted in Cressy, David Arthur, “Education and Literacy in London and East Anglia, 1580–1700” (unpub diss., Cambridge University, 1972)Google Scholar, and Lockridge, Kenneth, Literacy in Colonial New England: An Enquiry into the Social Context of Literacy in the Early Modern West (New York, 1974), pp. 21–25, 88–93Google Scholar. Lockridge argues that by the end of the eighteenth century New England achieved almost universal male literacy, and that this development was largely due to religious influences.

²¹ Orme, Nicholas, English Schools in the Middle Ages (London, 1973), p 49.Google Scholar

²² Cipolla, Carlo, Literacy and Development in the West (Baltimore, 1969), pp. 102–03Google Scholar; Lockridge, Literacy, p. 101; and Sanderson, Michael, “Literacy and Social Mobility in the Industrial Revolution in England,” Past and Present, 56 (1972), 75–104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²³ For this argument see Lockridge, Literacy, pp. 69–71; see also Sanderson, “Literacy and Industrial Revolution,” who argues that even early industrialization had no effect or a negative effect (pp. 75–104). Cressy's figures for East Anglia show that between 1580 and 1720 the literacy of tradesmen increased from a little over one-half to two-thirds. The changes in literacy for Middlesex and London were more dramatic, as these areas attracted the literate from all over the country. The literacy of yeomen changed in this same period from over 50 percent to almost three-fourths. Laboring groups and husbandmen showed little or no movement (“Education and Literacy,” pp. 315ff).